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Forum for Aboriginal Community Transformation through Theatre (FACT2008)
Submitted by Yuan Huo Taiwan Aboriginal Theatre

Background

With the institutionalization of the Taiwanese Indigenous Social Movement in 1996 via the establishment of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, Executive Yuan, Taiwan’s Indigenous Social Movement has been subverted by its own increasing passivity and dependence on government funding. As a result of this, many undertakings which are not in the government’s priorities for Indigenous people go undone, are delayed, or fall short of the precedence of economic development.
Yet simultaneously, Indigenous culture is promoted by the Taiwan local and national governments for tourism and national diversification from mainland China resulting in the commodification of Indigenous culture. With Indigenous cultural intellectual property right laws still in the early stages of conceptualization and codification, and with continual identity issues as a result of the historic ongoing process of cultural assimilation, the Taiwan Indigenous population is sensitive to the need for choice and ownership of expression.

One case in point is the Shan Yuan Beach Resort located in Taitung, Taiwan. Though the resort poses immediate environmental and cultural impacts on the surrounding Amis tribe who use the area for sustenance fishing, and who inevitably will be called on to perform Indigenous shows for the resort’s entertainment program, the tribe is unable to mount any case against the corporation for pollution and construction violations because traditional Indigenous lands have yet to be mapped out, documented, and officially recognized, while the village’s economy is such that employment opportunities cannot be ignored. It is in both these broader and local contexts that Yuan Huo promotes tribal theatre as a grassroots effort to communicate with mainstream society, our relationship with our tribal land and our respect for our traditional culture using story, song, and dance with the modern vehicle of theatre.

Goals of project

FACT2008 will bring together a minimum of three Indigenous/Aboriginal/Tribal theater groups who are currently using theater to advocate cultural awareness and sensitivity to the special circumstances of their country’s Indigenous/Aboriginal/Tribal population. Though each of the theater groups are at differing stages of progression with regard to each group’s own missions and goals, and though each group has entirely different social contexts and development experiences, the groups are equally comprised of community leaders, social advocates who are also artists, and likewise share common goals and in a common global consciousness regarding the plight of Indigenous peoples of every nation and the related social issues.

By bringing together such groups, FACT2008 is aimed specifically at the Indigenous/Aboriginal/Tribal community with goals to:
Encourage social activism, the need for the preservation and transmission of traditional culture, and sensitization of mainstream society to Indigenous/Aboriginal/Tribal issues through artistic expression among Indigenous performing artists;
Strengthen leadership skills among community Indigenous performance artists who are also leaders in their communities;
Provide an opportunity for dialogue among Indigenous performance artists who are also leaders in their communities;
Initiate social networking by establish a trans-national channel of communication between various nations. Indigenous artist-leaders and their respective communities;
Increase global, local, and individual attention to Indigenous issues;
Facilitate information exchange among various Indigenous communities about their cultural experiences, and their means to progression.


Description of project

FACT is an international performing arts conference to advance the social impact of Aboriginal/Indigenous/Tribal theatre, and to deepen leadership skills among indigenous grassroots organizations, facilitate dialogue among theatre groups which use theatre as a means to engage in grassroots social activism and interact with the mainstream consciousnesses of their respective cultures. It is an event for Indigenous artists to share their creative experiences, to discuss their cultural insights, and to learn from each other. The main activities of the forum include a keynote address by Dr. Kerim Friedman, a professor of visual and linguistic anthropology at the Department of Indigenous Cultures at National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan, performances of works which deal with community- and culturally-specific issues; workshops that challenge artists to move beyond the limitations of language and cultural identity; information exchange on conflict resolution, fundraising, nurturing community awareness and insight from traditional wisdom; as well as collaboration.


Time frame of project

FACT 2008 will be the first annual forum for Indigenous performance artists of its kind in Taiwan. Unlike performance arts workshops commonly held in the city centers and are generally comprised of participants from those city centers, FACT2008 will be held in rural Taiwan. Forums held in years following will hope to increase the number of participants from various corners of the earth. FACT 2008 is a seven-day event, from August 10th through August 17th . All forum activities will be held at the DuLan Sugar Factory in Taitung, Taiwan. The DuLan Sugar Factory is a public space used for art exhibitions, roundtable discussions, and performance art located in the Amis village of DuLan on the east coast of southern Taiwan.

The first night will be a welcoming ceremony for the participating guests performed by members and Indigenous artists of the local village. This will give the participating artists a chance to informally become acquainted with the local culture as well as with other participants. A keynote address from Dr. Friedman will set the tone for the subsequent days wherein days two through five will be leadership and theatrical workshops with nights spent focusing on the presentation and performance of the works of each participating theatre group, as well as informal discussions of each culturally specific challenges faced by each participating group. The sixth day will be a discussion to present each group’s creative processes and approaches, as well as a roundtable discussion about how these creative processes and approaches evolved as solutions to the current state of each group’s community, for whom they represent. Following this daytime activity, on the final night some participating artists from each of the three countries, Taiwan, India, and Australia, will stage a collaborated performance of a common issue among their tribes. It will be the concluding expression of the week’s discoveries and a unifying act which overcomes linguistic, cultural and national differences. To intensify the experience of the participating artists, a traditional dance festivity will be held on the last night of the forum during in which the participating artists will be invited to learn traditional dances and to dance with members of the local community. The seventh and last day will be spent traveling to Taipei by train across the countryside for a press conference at the Council of Indigenous People, Executive Yuan.


Projected output of project

It is our request that the Arts Network Asia provides operating support for this first annual forum for Indigenous performance artists. By so doing, the ANA can have an immediate and dramatic impact by helping lesser-known international indigenous grassroots performance art organizations to expand their capacities to develop local leadership and to develop the resources necessary to insure the goals of these indigenous organizations are realized in the long-term. FACT2008 will focus on:
Leadership Development: FACT2008’s week-long forum will be is a most in depth and sophisticated element of the program in that invited academics, as well as leading artists, and community elders will provide advice and consultation to each participant group. Local youths as well as university students from the nearby Indigenous College (Department of Indigenous Cultures at National Dong Hwa University) will also be present.
Direct Information Exchange: FACT2008 will facilitate discussions which aim for the exchange of experiential-based knowledge of ways to resolve culturally and socially problems specific to each group’s local community.
Enhanced Repertoire: The success of each participating groups’ ability to create a dialog with mainstream society is due, in large part, to the “base” of traditional and current resources, which includes both financial and human resources. Any artistic inspiration in addition to knowledge of potentially supportive regional and transnational organizations, connections to funders, sponsors, and the local constituency can facilitate the creation of long-term international inter-tribal arts programs, conference-related events, activities as expansions of each of the participating organizations’ repertoire. By doing so, the collective voices of these Indigenous grassroots organizations will produce deep-rooted impressions on the conventional global consciousness.


Project target audience

FACT2008’s target audience is the audiences each participating group is at the same time engaged with so as to further facilitate a means to acquire the language and skills to bring each groups’ parlay to the next level. Information about the project will be disseminated via the media (press conference which will air on local television programming, film documentation of the event which will be translated into both short films for each participating groups’ portfolio and a feature-length documentary to be showed at various international festivals, and photography) and literary modes such as print and website articles, blog posts, and the like.


Project impact

FACT2008 will produce a three-fold impact on each of the participating cultures. As it is with cultural exchanges, the appreciation learned and shared during the forum will positively affect all aspects of each group’s ingenuity and drive. Stories and experiences shared in the forum will stimulate and inspire creativity in the local and visiting artists, as well as give them new perspectives to integrate into their traditional performing art forms and cultural consciousnesses.

For the Indigenous people of Taiwan, this forum will be a model event for using grassroots efforts to stimulate social awareness and foster innovation by bringing Indigenous artists/community leaders together to share their experiences and their knowledge of real Indigenous community development with like-minded people. More importantly, this forum will serve as an alternative event to the Austronesan Festival, an annual and local government-sponsored event with the objective to boost the local tourism industry by inviting various local and international dance groups to perform. Furthermore, this forum will establish an international network of vanguard groups who use theatre as a means to advance the dialogue between local traditional cultures and mainstream society, a network which will become denser with every annual FACT2008 event.

Lastly, FACT2008 will be documented on film and be included in a forthcoming documentary film about a young Indigenous social activist who travels to three (sub-) continents, including India and Australia, to document the issue-based performance art of various Indigenous artists and groups who use their traditional talents and/or arts to converse with their societies, as a platform to induce awareness of Indigenous concerns. The film aims to arouse the Taiwanese Indigenous audience specifically to become aware of its present relationship with its government while at the same time aims to stimulate a general respect for traditional forms of expression that move beyond traditional culture as a product for tourism consumption.

Project collaborators

Participant artists are members from three theatre groups which currently are advancing in their missions to enlighten their particular societies about the plight of its indigenous people through creativity and grassroots community development. The participant artists are not only performance artists of the highest caliber, they are also young community leaders who are taking steps to ensure that their next generation will have a better future. Each group will bring a wealth of practitioner knowledge and experience to the forum-invaluable resources to all participants.

YIRRA YAAKIN
Established in 1993, Yirra Yaakin has been initiating workshops for Australian Aboriginal youth with the priority to provide opportunities for Aboriginal artists at all levels of creation and production. Yirra Yaakin works closely with local Aboriginal communities and schools as providers of hands on skills development in a wide range of theatre practices including arts management, staging, production, and performance. The group is the only Aboriginal cultural organization to run such a large and ongoing training/mentoring program dedicated to the performing arts industry in Australia. They have also toured many international festivals world wide and have received numerous awards.

BUDHAN THEATER
Since 1998, Budhan Theatre has performed street plays dramatizing events surrounding police brutality including custodial deaths, abductions, beatings and torture of indigenous people throughout India. The group’s members are Indian de-notified tribals, traditionally nomadic peoples, who are institutionally stigmatized as a criminal tribe since the British colonial era. Though a marginalized people with a seemingly predetermined future, Budhan Theatre has been reaching out to its youth and to other discriminated tribal communities, thusly expanding its artistic range and the potential for its next generation. The story of this theatre group is also the focus of a forthcoming documentary film, Hooch and Hamlet in Chharanagar, which will open in both New York and India in 2008.

YUAN WU ZHE
The foremost Aboriginal dance group in Taiwan since 1991, Yuan Wu Zhe has brought traditional Aboriginal songs and dance to the public stage. Recently branching out in to theatrical renditions of historical stories and the lives of influential members of the Aboriginal community, Yuan Wu Zhe has successfully and independently brought Aboriginal song and dance in to the realm of fine art in Taiwan. Furthermore, Yuan Wu Zhe aims to perpetuate a respect for traditional song and dance in the younger generation by calling on talented Aboriginal college students for its “casts”.

YUAN HUO
From 2000, Yuan Huo has been positioning Indigenous people in the Taiwan arts industry. From film and television program production and writing for the “Indigenous Peoples Television Channel” and the “Public Broadcasting Channel”, to arts management including promotion and production of festivals, exhibitions, political protests, to theatre and music, Yuan Huo has been a vital force in the re-invention of a positive image for Taiwan’s Indigenous people. In 2003, a member of the group staged the ultimate demonstration by sacrificing his life in protest of the corporate exploitation of traditional Amis tribal land on the east coast of southern Taiwan. Since then, Yuan Huo continues to work with DuLan village’s local community to develop its voice and political sway using theatre and local music to do so, in addition to promoting indigenous people to work in media, and utilizing media to campaign for indigenous community re-construction projects. (Yuan Huo also works closely with Yuan Wu Zhe as the Indigenous arts circle in Taiwan is small.)

FACT2008 is an international event and therefore we would continue to seek local and international funding. Because FACT2008 will be a first-annual event, it would be ideal to promote it in such a way as to encourage more participants and funding in the coming years.